‘We’ll fight as long as we have to,’ Captain Sviatoslav Palamar, 39, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment.

Dried up, shrivelled, exposed, weather-beaten,
Warps and wefts waste away the body afflicted with decay
The hey-ho day of the day-to-day. Friends desert us quite,
And no quenching pleases.
What was is rubbed away, like stains that dry
Wither, languish, and decay. Time pines away.
In this quagmire, this swamp of guilt, regret
Spilt water, wine: I forget.

No transubstantiation this, no divine release
Into immortal bliss: yoked, ploughed,
Dragged, inchoate; a process has begun.
A work of resistance, an inception into art
Of all the heart-wrung soul that is left in me.,
A back-formation, if you like, a lamenting,
Quite.

Welcome now obscurity, shadow,
Winters tree stripped,
Bent in these winds of time.
A modulation of a voice, a volte-face:
No variation of mood. No conjugation of man
Has such bad intent as to awaken from sleep
The legions of demons that laugh as we weep.

Stripped down, declined back to the exoskeleton,
That shadow behind the sun,
And yet we take such passing grace in diminutives — ducklings,
Sweeties, babies — these auras, gentle breezes,
Whisper of what we were, and could become again.

Release us from all those who shout, insist, twist
the days’ mysteries into the measliness of time
reducible to acquiring money, power, prestige
war, murder, rape, genocide.
All we need is a little empty space-time….
for everything under heaven is strange and new
and resists the slaughter of the innocents.